Illegal telephone exchanges pose serious threat to national security

Illegal telephone exchanges in Kerala are posing serious security threats besides causing losses that run into crores to the government. These exchanges use foreign servers making it impossible to track the users, making it the favourite option for rackets.

The police made the findings during a probe into a Kozhikode-based racket that operated eight illegal telephone exchanges last year. The probe revealed the role of an organised pan-India network behind the establishment of illegal exchanges in Kozhikode.

These illegal exchanges handled vast amounts of calls at a time when many apps were available for free of cost. The state police have decided to hand over the case to the National Investigation Agency (NIC).

Kozhikode City Crime Branch Assistant Commissioner Anil Sreenivasan said the probe into the functioning of illegal exchanges in Kozhikode revealed that the accused were using a foreign server purchased by a company set up by them to route calls as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

“Normally, international calls are routed through the firms having a licence to operate long-distance calls. Earlier, illegal telephone exchanges were set up by rackets since international calls were expensive and they provide services to users at a much cheaper rate. Moreover, calls routed through illegal exchanges cannot be traced, enabling rackets to use it for illegal activities,” he said. He added that the rackets convert an international call from a mobile to VoIP and then process it through a SIM box which again converts the VoIP to a local call.